Powers (14 page)

Probably she still planned to kill him, once Legion was through with them.

“How do you handle ID? I mean, cops are big on background checks . . . ”

She turned into the alley that led to the alley they wanted. “Pretty easy, if you plan ahead, and don’t let locks argue with you. Plant a birth certificate, city clerk usually has the forms right there in the office and you’re already using the right typewriter, wait twenty years, then ask for a certified copy for Social Security, driver’s license, you name it. Let that ride for another ten years, racking up points. Just don’t get impatient. People like us have the time. I never claim to be younger than thirty.”

Two men had been picking through the trash. He thought they were men but in the dirty shapeless jackets and baggy pants, hair tucked up under ragged knit caps, they could be women. Ms. Detective
Lieutenant
el Hajj unslung her shotgun and carried it braced on one hip aimed at the sky, and they vanished. Sort of like a Western movie he’d seen once, citizens going
poof!
off the dusty main street when the bad guy and the sheriff appeared at opposite ends of the block. No bad guy for
High Noon,
here, not that he could see.

“Is that part of the police procedure manual? Scaring citizens off the street?”

She glanced over at him and then turned back to scanning the roof-parapets overhead. Probably watching for snipers. “You planning to file a complaint? You think
they
are planning to file a complaint?”

“No and no.”

“Then it’s proper procedure.”

Maybe she got promoted because they didn’t dare do anything else with her.

“Do you have a real name?”

They walked on, dodging trash and dogshit on the rough pavement, scanning the blank brick walls for threats. They passed the place where the men/women had been. Damned if Albert could see where they went. Magic trick. He’d just about decided she wasn’t going to answer his question . . .

“No. Not that I can remember. You?”

He
also
wanted to think a bit on that, before bringing things out into open air. Then, “No. That name Legion used, ‘Lahti’ is a place in Finland. ‘Simon’ is religious camouflage that Mother used, nothing more.”

Since she apparently felt like talking, he asked, “How do your ‘people’ handle it, the ones from your village, this business of living forever? Or are they all like you? Us?”

“They help. They provide references, fake job experience for me, that sort of thing. They’re humans. They grow old and die, but they do what I ask them to do. Humans are like that, facing their goddess.” She looked bleak. “They help me remember who I am.”

Oh, hell. “That Kali in your apartment, that’s another portrait, yes?”

“Not my choice.”

“I never noticed the second set of arms.”

“I keep them hidden.” Then she shrugged, with a grimace. “That’s how they explain my speed. I can’t remember the last time someone managed to hit me, much less hurt me. That’s part of why I had to follow you.”

“I’m not fast. I just caught you by surprise.”

“And
that
was the surprising part.”

They turned into the wider alley. No people. The door was still there, the door that didn’t exist into a four-story old brick building that also didn’t exist and didn’t even bother to offer an illusion on the street side of the block.

“Why so talkative, all of a sudden? You told me that you ask questions, not answer them.”

“Little man, you’re the first new thing to cross my path in over a
century.
I’d decided to open up before I invited you into my apartment, let you react to it. Then, hearing you curse with a tongue long dead, that was a breath of mountain air here in the lowlands. No one has dared curse me since that dying Badakhi. I hope you understand what you said.”

“I think so. Ali Akhbar Khan explained each word and the cultural meanings each carried.”

“Good. Never give offense without intending it.”

With that, they faced the door.

One of the dead weeds was broken, still hanging on its stem and drawing arcs back and forth in the gathered dust with each gust of wind. It hadn’t been broken when he looked before, a few hours ago. The slit between wood and dust looked different.

“Someone’s been through this since we were here.”

She nodded and waved him back. Nerves made him reach back and touch his knife hilt under the backpack, make sure it waited free. The dogs inside broke into frenzied barking and growling, he could hear claws scratching at the wood that blocked them from their lawful prey.

“It isn’t locked. Not even latched. Anyone could push this open. If they could see it.”

He remembered a pack of wild dogs, years ago under hot dry dusty sun in another land. Not a good memory.
Don’t let them get behind you.
He drew his knife and backed up until he bumped against the wall across the alley. Solid and reassuring.

She braced the shotgun against her side, finger inside the trigger guard, and nudged the door with one boot. It opened about eight inches, about one dog wide. She knew what she was doing, that was obvious. Albert flinched. Nothing happened. A splat of rain hit him at the same time he realized the dogs had fallen silent. She nudged the door again, half open now, and still no dogs. She kept the muzzle of the shotgun low, dog height. For a large dog, that is, not ankle-biting Chihuahuas.

Nothing but another gust of wind, another short burst of rain. Cold rain, with a hint of ice to sting his cheek.

He saw worn flagstone paving inside, a narrow view of a courtyard with galleries around, a marble fountain with a weathered green bronze maiden pouring water from an amphora in the middle. In sunshine.

No guard dogs.

She kicked the door wide. No dogs, no people, no rain. Four floors of galleries, white marble columns and Moorish-style marble pierced screen-work carved in floral patterns serving as rails between the columns, he’d seen something like this in a courtyard in Spain. Doors off the galleries were solid-looking dark wooden rail-and-stile doors with faded flaking varnish like the one into the alley.

He inched forward, seeing more of the same, following her through the door as she swept the corners with the muzzle of her shotgun, then scanned the galleries. Three doors per side on each level of the galleries. Red tile roof over the top level, courtyard open to blue sky and a hot sun. Open stairway with more pierced stonework for a rail, switch-backing up the rear corner to his right. He stopped in the doorway, staring back and forth between the dry courtyard and the spitting sleet of the alley. He moved one hand back and forth through the plane of the wall and could feel a line between the weathers, cold and wet to hot and dry in a razor’s edge.

He stepped all the way inside, and studied the place. Three doors times four floors equals twelve. Mirror image on the other side, twenty-four. No doors on the narrower front, one old casement-style double window, small leaded-glass diamond panes, on each floor instead, including the ground floor where the tattoo shop stood on the other side of this block. He moved out into the courtyard and checked the back wall. One door into the alley, one door on each of the three floors above. Where the hell did those go, through a blank brick wall?

One door in, twenty-seven doors out. Mystical numbers?

“Should I close the door?”

She kept sweeping the four sides with her shotgun, nervous. He couldn’t blame her. Hairs prickled on the back of his own neck.

A quick glance at him, one eyebrow up. Then a shrug and back to the sweep. “Go ahead and cut off our retreat. If we can’t get back out, well, that backpack you’re toting is my jump bag—food, water, basic camping gear.”

Jump bag. Emergency supplies for evacuation, recommended kit for hurricane or flood or brushfire country where you might have to cut and run on a few minutes’ notice, live on your own resources for a week or more until you could go home again. It figured that
she
would keep one, here in a city that fit none of those categories.

Of course, he had one too. In case he needed to leave town in a hurry, for a non-natural cause.

He closed the door, after checking that it had a handle on the inside. He opened it again. Alley still there. Still filled with gusts of rain, streaking the brick and turning the dust to cratered mud. The wind didn’t pass through the opening. But his hand could. He closed the door again. No reason to invite alley rats in, two-legged or four.

She’d been watching him. Nodded. Went back to threat assessment. Put her foot on the bottom step of the stairway. “I’ll go up and scout. You keep lookout down here.”

Words echoed down, a clear alto voice. “I’d rather you stayed down there, too, O Goddess of the Mountain Winds. I prefer to hold the high ground.”

He knew that voice.

Albert’s eyes searched the upper galleries but couldn’t see her. Pierced stone-work had been invented to serve as a privacy screen as well as decoration, and it was doing its job. There might be a shadow darkening it in the far front corner of the fourth floor . . .

Metal clicked behind him, and he glanced back. A shotgun barrel pointed at the same corner. A hint of police baseball cap and eye peeked over the railing of the stairway. Boots in the shadow underneath. Ms. Detective Lieutenant el Hajj, in full combat mode.

At least she hadn’t fired. Yet.

“Don’t shoot. That’s Mother.”

“Move away,” she whispered. “Split the target.”

Laughter above. “Simon, dear boy. Please introduce me to your girlfriend. I know
what
she is, but I don’t know
who.
”

He still couldn’t see her, and the voice seemed to jump from one corner to the other. Mother had tricks like that.

He stepped out into the courtyard, completely contrary to Official Orders. “Mother, this is Detective Lieutenant Melissa el Hajj of the city police’s arson division. She’s here to arrest you for abuse of a salamander.”

More laughter. “You always
did
have a sense of humor. How about if I promise to never do it again?”

He turned toward the shotgun barrel, still pointed comfortably upward. The blast would hurt, add to his long-term hearing loss from the forge and all, but nothing more damaging than that . . .

“Well, that gets Legion off our asses. We’ve solved your crime. We know who did it, and she says she’ll stop.”

Then he remembered the other thing and twitched, the thing Legion
hadn’t
ordered them to do. That Legion had dodged even mentioning, but had set up with great care. Demoniacal care, even. For whatever reason.

“Mother, you have to give that star back. I have to fix it.”

The laughter held an edge now, bordering on sarcasm and . . . insanity? “Fix it?
Fix
it? I spent a thousand years learning that the thing existed, fading a little with every minute of every day and never knowing why. Another thousand years finding it. A third thousand following its travels and waiting until the faith that guarded it died. Seven times seven years since they took the Torah out of that cabinet and left, leaving forgotten the last remaining relic from Solomon the Great. That long for the guard to fade, so I could enter. It still took all my power and the life-heat of a salamander to even crack the foul thing. And you want to
fix
it?”

So she had killed the salamander. No wonder Legion was pissed.

“No, little Simon Lahti, you do
not
want to fix it. That Seal was killing you as well as me. Killing your Mountain Goddess girlfriend. Even cracked and leaking its own power, it still holds your names, sucks power from you. Old Solly was a bastard, yes he was. ‘Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.’ That’s all his God asked, admitting that other Gods existed for other tribes. But Solly had to be a hero, make his little tribal God supreme. He forged that thing in the fires of his own soul, subtle but strong, to drain us over centuries. And the sneaky little shit said that he loved me . . . ”

She broke off.

Albert felt movement beside him, glanced over, saw the . . . Mountain Goddess? . . . still holding her shotgun aimed at the corner of the gallery but out from behind the stair. He couldn’t read her face—no expression at all, except concentration.

“Who the hell are
you?
”

He looked back up. Mother had moved forward, stood just behind the screen-work railing. She wore something classic in gold cloth, a sari perhaps, but wrapped and draped across her dark skin so that right shoulder and right breast remained bare. Typical of her, style and casual body-sense that never paid much attention to whatever culture they were visiting. She made the rules. Everyone else obeyed them. Even in past centuries, when dark skin meant slavery in this land, no one had ever questioned her. She was what she was.

Like a goddess. A fertility goddess out of prehistory, short with big breasts and big hips and dark and beautiful. He’d forgotten how beautiful.

“Who am I? Balkis, goddess of Sa’aba am I. I heard of a human dabbling in our powers, and went to see. He acted nice. We exchanged gifts and knowledge and . . . other things. I left and returned to my own land and worshipers. I never knew how he took my secrets and betrayed me, until the Seal worked its evil through the years. By the time I knew that I should kill him, he was already dust.”

A snort of derision echoed in his right ear. “Forgive me for questioning your tale, O Goddess, but how do you know
your
name if the great Seal of Suleiman bin Dauod is sucking
mine
away? If we are all gods and goddesses together . . . ?”

Again the laughter, even wilder. “Solly was a bastard, like I said. He worked my name into the Seal, to hide what he had done from the only goddess who could have hunted him down and stopped him while there was still time. He left me enough of my powers that I wouldn’t suspect him. Like I told you, it took me a millennium to know what he’d done.”

Then her voice sobered. “Don’t bother trying to follow me. I don’t have the Seal. I hid it. When it leaks enough of its own power through that crack, I’ll destroy it and we’ll all be free once more. The gods
will
come again.”